Best Technology Gifts for Senior Adults this Holiday Season

When you were a small child, you could probably give Mom or Dad any kind of gift for the holidays–a pretty rock or a stick-figure drawing–and they would be delighted.

As an adult child, you want to give your senior loved ones something useful, such as a technology gift to make their lives easier and more enjoyable.

Fortunately, there are many high-tech items to choose from. Let’s take a look.

Assistive Devices

• Earbuds that will help seniors enjoy listening to their favorite music without resorting to turning the volume up for all to hear on a speaker system.
• Cell phones with basic functions and easy-to-read display, and perhaps an emergency response button to push if they need immediate help. There are also simplified smartphones, like the Jitterbug Smartphone, with a less confusing interface, emergency response button, and easily accessible medical-related apps. This smartphone can also supply reminders on when to take medications and refill prescriptions.
• Electric jar openers when arthritis or hand weakness makes opening a jar painful and sometimes impossible.
• Grocery list organizers allow people to add items to their grocery list through a speaker as they come to mind, and then print a paper list organized by departments.

Devices That Connect

• Digital photo frames that store several photos of family, friends and special times together.
• Webcams that display a friendly and familiar face during chats with loved ones.
• Talking photo albums where pictures can be placed and messages or music recorded.
• Picture landline phone. For some seniors, memorizing or retaining phone numbers becomes increasingly difficult. However, seniors hold onto their memory of loved ones’ faces much longer. The picture phone is designed to accommodate photos of loved ones on a button that will place a call to them. (An example would be the Future Call FC-1007 Picture Care Phone.)

Health and Physical Activity

• Fitness/activity monitoring watches, which hopefully will encourage Mom or Dad to keep moving.
• Blood pressure monitoring systems like the Qardioarm that not only measure blood pressure but detect irregular heartbeats. The data from the device can be shared with a physician as well as family members.

Safety

• Car GPS systems come in handy when your seniors are driving to an unfamiliar place or become temporarily confused about where to turn on the way home.
• Video doorbell systems will let your senior loved ones know who is at their front door even when they are not at home.

Day-to-Day Helpers

• Password storage devices. Who can remember all the passwords needed to navigate life, much less what scrap of paper they are written on? Password storage devices store all the passwords your seniors need. All the senior needs to remember is the one password for the device.

Just for Fun

• Kindles for seniors who like to read.
• Nintendo Wii, a motion-controlled video game that can provide the activity and fun your senior adults may need. Just select the topic he/she prefers (sport, dance, cycling, etc.), and make sure they can enjoy the activity safely.
• Other video games are plentiful, and a surprising number of seniors play them. Flight simulators can be found on the Nintendo Wii. The game Wordscapes combines traditional crossword puzzles and a letter scramble. The idea is to create as many words as possible with a letter provided to fill in the blanks of a crossword. It has over 6,000 levels of play and is available in Apple and Android.
• Virtual assistants. Amazon’s Alexa on Alexa-enabled devices like Echo, provide news, information, Internet searches, games, music, and a wealth of other ever-expanding services to enhance the lives of senior adults.

Find more tips to keep this holiday season happy for you and your senior loved ones on our blog!